The 2007 International Tokyo Toy Show is currently running at the Tokyo Big Sight until Sunday, and toy manufacturers are out in force to promote their latest creations. The Japanese press has been covering some of these innovative toys, with special focus on gadgets and robots. Here are video clips of what stood out to me as the three coolest toys featured in news reports about the event:

First off is the Air Guitar Pro!

Takara Tomy Toys has produced this air guitar enhancement toy, which has been featured on several gadget blogs recently. Here’s how technabob described it:

You play the Air Guitar by holding your fingers on chord buttons on the fretboard, and then strumming in the air. It works its magic by using infrared sensor in the neck of the guitar to detect your hand motions. While the battery-operated Air Guitar does have a built in speaker, you can also connect it to an external amplifier when you want to crank up the volume.

Sounds pretty cool, and judging from the video, it’s tremendously fun!

Those who like to pop bubble wrap packaging will love this next toy:

Researchers at Bandai have apparently created a toy that perfectly simulates the stress-reducing sensation one gets when popping bubble wrap. They call it Puchi Puchi, since the popping of bubble wrap apparently sounds like puchi to Japanese people. To add some variety to this toy, every 100 pops a random non-puchi sound will play, such as a dog barking or a woman’s voice saying “iiyaaaa!” You can expect this toy to hit stores in September, at the low price of 819 yen (less than $10).

Finally, how about some robots?

Takara Tomy’s Omnibot2007 i-SOBOT is a fancy little robot that is aimed at adult customers who love gadgets. It is a scaled down version of an earlier Omnibot, but its $200+ price tag and somewhat complex controls mean that very few children are actually going to be getting one:

If you’re interested in seeing more about the Omnibot and similar toys, check out this video of otaku Patrick Macias’ video report on robot culture, or this Engadget post on the robot.